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Bike & Build

Dawn in Clayton. An armory abutting an airfield hosted us for the night, so we had this clear view of the rising sun. Since today was so long, we all left at dawn.

A quiet cinder cone volcano just outside of Clayton.

Do you like the endless pictures of straight roads as much as I enjoy riding them? This one came with a headwind!

Lunch was at mile 50 or so, at the only rest stop on the highway. (2 cities were on the route today, too)

A gas station 5 miles past lunch offered coffee and cold drinks. They had a breakfast menu, and I think a few people got pancakes.

The most Western looking house. They aren't quite visible on camera, but you could see the Rockies! Look for the whitish peaks just above the house.

Getting back into the mountains. Lower winds and better views.

Couldn't ask for a better view while changing a flat.

Just another nice view.

The van fit 8-9 bikes at a time, and ferrying took a while. We ate at Denny's while waiting.

Welcome to beautiful Colorado! And Evan - it's a photo with me in it.

I took this photo, though.

We biked into Colorado today! As we crossed through New Mexico and approached Colorado, the plains gradually began to give way to mesas and hills. As we neared the state line, the Rockies even came into view.

Unfortunately, bikes were banned on the highway we would have ridden into Colorado. To cover the last 20 miles into Trinidad, we loaded bikes into the emptied trailer 8 at a time and drove across the state line.

An old telephone switchboard. The sort where the operator plugged lines together.

Blood transfusion machine. The caption noted that this was used before the era of blood typing. Scary.

And rewind to the morning. Here are all of the bikes in Dalhart.

Downtown Dalhart had this church that was definitely never a movie theatre. Nope.

These roads are all the same. I accidentally put up a picture from yesterday's ride and couldn't tell them apart, save for the timestamp.

This gas station needed four satellite dishes to stay in touch. I think one was cable TV and one was internet. Dunno what the other two were for.

We made it to New Mexico, the end of the plains.

There was a big irrigator right next to the sign, so here's a close-up of what these behemoths look like when they're on. They gradually crawl in an arc (the near end is fixed and tired to a well), giving rise to those crop circles.

Downtown Clayton wasn't quite lively on a Monday. All the buildings were pretty old brick, though.

I accidentally skipped the entry for June 29th, so here it is.

The ride today took us across another state line into New Mexico, where we stayed at the National Guard armory in Clayton. A local museum, the Hertzstien Memorial Museum, invited us in and offered dinner. The Hertzstiens's were a local benefactor to Clayton. After making a fortune trading land during the depression, Mr. Hertstien started looking for ways to give back to the community.

The museum itself was themed around Clayton's history and included all sorts of oddball gizmos. Read the image captions for more!

Watonga's water tower with dawn weather westward (actually east, but westward is alliterative)

Past of downtown Watonga. Downtown is relative around here.

On the way out, some of our riders saw a stationary boxcar and decided to climb it with their bikes for a photo.

This is Watonga's silo. I'm not sure if it holds wheat or something else. Regardless, these things are uniformly concrete, about 100' tall, and uniformly charmless.

I'm afraid my bad luck with tires continued today. I had a pair of puncture flats on my replacement back tire.

A pretty shot against the plains. There's not much out here.

Except for random gas stations. As per southern tradition, there was another shuttered station across the street. This one was open, but hasn't seen a remodel since 1965.

Another photo of the middle of nowhere. It's pretty, aside from the endlessness.

This is Selling, where we stopped for lunch. You can tell it's a big city since there is a combine on a trailer.

A couple of wind turbines. These guys were everywhere, but spread out to far too get a good photo of.

We stopped in Vici for some snacks and a bathroom break.

The mud looked cool. So here is a photo of dessicated mud. Aren't you glad you're reading this?

As we biked past, Helen suggested that this is where they got the background for Oregon Trail games.

This was an oddity. The church in Arnett had an industrial kitchen intentionally styled to look residential. I thought it was really cozy.

They also had cute photo collages from prior years trips. This church has hosted B&B since 2009, when the route started.

One of my images from yesterday noted that these South-central towns have three features: churches, silos, and water towers. Today, I'd like to submit a similar description for the plains between the cities (towns, communities, whatever they are): oil wells and wind turbines. It's an odd mix.

All our bikes stacked outside before sunrise. The first order of business every day is airing up the tires, checking the brakes, and cleaning the chain.

Everyone getting ready to head out. Getting dressed in the morning is a bit of an ordeal: spandex, camelback, camera, helmet, and cleats once we're outside.

Just an intersection in OKC.

Here's the bike path we started the day on. A bunch of us took the path to far...

... And ended up here. Fortunately, Route 66 was only 1/2 mile down to the right.

Every Southwestern town has at least three features: a gas station, a church, and a huge concrete grain silo.

El Reno was our second town of the day, around 30 miles in.

Everyone's bikes stacked at lunch in Middle of Nowhere, OK.

Here's a stretch of Route 66. I hate to say it, but the songs and movies had me hoping for more.

Everyone was really excited when we found this gas station 15 miles past lunch. They had running water and bathrooms! I got myself a smoothie to cool down and rehydrate.

The middle of nowhere. I promise, there isn't a city hiding behind the shrubs.

So, there's this big flag mural in Watonga that everyone wanted to visit for a photo op. I had just started replacing my rear tire, so I took the biggest piece of my bike.

At just a smidge over 2000 miles of wear, my back tire blew up today. It wan't too bad, really. I was only two blocks from the Babtist church and going slowly. Really strange, though. One second you're riding. Then a loud bang, like a nailgun. Then the road is suddenly harder and the bike starts sliding around.

Today's ride took us from Oklahoma City to Watonga, OK in 74 miles. Outdoor of the minor afternoon explosion, the ride was really nice. We left OKC a bit past dawn, as usual. After leaving downtown, the route took us on trails for a while. Then we all got lost. We found our way, then settled in on the historical path of Route 66.

Increasingly, we barely hit civilization on these routes, so even a lone gas station is an event.

The van had a flat on the way over, so the 15 of us that rode the Habitat van got to hang out in the shade for a while. Don't leave Allen wrenches in the road, kids.

Roof trusses were installed with 18" spacing. Maya's installing a brace up on top to keep them vertical.

The trusses were a bit funky in the corners, since the roof was a full gable.

The sun illuminated the roof trusses nicely, so I took a picture.

The trusses were all stored across the street. Groups of two and three carried them to the house, then a separate crew hosted them up to the roof.

Another picture in the corner of the roof. There's a little funkiness going on with differently sized trusses forming the roof surface.

The homeowner had is sign all our names on the garage floor. She planned to clear-coat it to remember us by.

It looks like a house, doesn't it? We built it in two days!

We kept building on the same house today. As I wrote before, the sheeting needed a ton of nails, so lots of today was spent nailing those down more securely. We also hoisted a pile of prefab roof trusses, and a few people scrambled around on the roof nailing then down.

Build site at the start of the day, with door frames in the foreground and the concrete slab behind.

With 30 people to hammer, the walls went together quickly.

Here's the concrete slab as it stood in the morning. You can kinda set see the spray paint on the top and bottom plates.

Getting ready to raise a wall!

Everyone worked together to walk the walk up to vertical, then the Habitat employees braced it with scrap wood.

Within a few hours, the house was starting to look like something.

A sill plate on top helped anchor the individual walls together. Four nails went into each corner.

We also installed sheeting with a really excessive number of nails. A tornado wiped out the neighborhood a few years back, so we tried to ensure everything in this house could stand at least an EF-3 tornado.

And the final product! All the walls are up and most of the sheeting is on.

Our two build days in Oklahoma City were spent on the same build site, so we had the chance to make really substantial progress. Our group arrived to an empty concrete slab and managed to complete the framing and sheeting in one day and the roof trusses the next.

The Habitat site was super organized,too. They'd previously laid out the to and bottom plates for every wall. Stud locations were penciled and doors and windows were marked in color-coded spray paint. The doors and window frames themselves were all preframed.

The house itself had a 2-car garage, two bedrooms, a kitchen, den, and lots of closets.

Later in the ride, trees were fewer and further between. For the sake of shade, we stopped at this slightly sketchy old folks home.

This is a road with fewer trees on it. I don't scraggly have a story to go with it.

Erin having a snack on the bike. Note the clever use of a bicycle as a chair.

There's a Pennsylvania town near Lafayette named Jim Thorpe, after the athlete.

Lunch was in Prague. I had no idea when I signed up for this trip how many international cities we would hit. Prague, Rome, Athens, and England so far.

I was lying next to the trailer during lunch and really liked the framing and colors. So I took a picture.

As we head west, towns get smaller and even the slightest hint of civilization - running water, bathrooms, ice, or snacks - is worth stopping for.

A fireworks stand stood right next to the general store. It's poor banner was heeling over in the wind.

Today's ride took us 92 miles into the first real city we've seen in a while - Oklahoma City. High headwinds made the ride a little slower than usual. There are reliable winds out of the southwest across most of the plains, and they were rough today.

The ride was great, though. I was with Erin and Lauren, and they both did a great job of pushing forward despite the winds. We only z stopped every 15 - 20 miles, which works out to two hours or so between breaks at headwind speeds.

I post a lot of dawn photos because everything looks so different before sunrise. Here's the van illuminated by the glowing sky.

A step descent came just after we left the church. Signs half a mile away warned that trucks and towed vehicles were forbidden on the descent.

As the sun rose, it illuminated westward clouds in a rainbow. The city beneath is downtown Van Buren.

We passed through a small downtown area as we left Van Buren, with the cutest old buildings.

Just before the state line, we ran into this fairground/diner/thingey. It was closed on Sundays or we would've gone inside.

Everyone stopped at the state line for photos.

I have no idea of where this is, but it's very pretty.

One of the cities we passed prided itself on being the land of umpteen flags. (I forget the number). Over time, the physical land has been under a ton of rulers.

Helen felt a little grim today. Her knees were bugging her and it was a long day to start with. And headwinds.

Taking a short break in a field.

Most of the day was endless plains. It takes effort to remember that these views are new to you all, even when I've been seeing it all day.

Lunch was at this abandoned minimart. A few people snuck into the mart to look around.

Just an intersection in the middle of nowhere. Helen stopped for a snack break.

We crossed another state line today as we rode from Van Buren, AR to Henrietta, OK. At 109 miles, this was the longest ride so far.

A few miles before lunch, Dustin, Helen, and I decided to stop at a donut shop for a snack. On a whim, we also grabbed a dozen to share at lunch. (Did you know that a box of a dozen donuts will fit on the back of a camelback?) Everyone loved the treat - even though we career carry all manner of leftover goodies, fresh-baked donuts were a winner.

Helen's knees weren't feeling so great today, so she decided to call the van a few miles before lunch. After taking a day off to recover, she got back to biking.